There’s no question that social media offers companies an unprecedented opportunity to engage consumers. Ninety percent of marketers report that social media is important to their business, according to Social Media Examiner’s 2016 industry report. But for global firms navigating the ever-emerging crop of sites, platforms, norms, and new content types, each opportunity has a cost. And only 41% of those surveyed believe they are able to measure the return on their social media investment.

One common approach is to target “superfans”—the 20% of consumers who provide 80% of the revenue. But Reilly said that a wider range of “fans” can be engaged by asking why a fan is motivated and what triggers his or her behavior. Understanding motivation lets companies match content to the right platform. Facebook and Twitter are better fits for fans seeking entertainment or social connection, while Reddit and Tumblr are sites where fans motivated by mastery or advocacy may generate their own content. Reilly wrote, “When we look at fans through the lens of our two core questions of motivations and triggers, we discover multiple points of entry into a fan community, with multiple versions of meaningful engagement.”

Ragy Thomas, CEO and founder of Sprinklr, talked with Yale Insights about what’s at stake with social media. The virality of social platforms provide customers with megaphones. “Word of mouth is so powerful. If you have a great product, you have raving fans telling everyone else. On the flip side, if people don’t like your product, you’re toast,” Thomas said.

“I think everyone understands that something needs to be done,” Thomas said. “I think there is a lack of understand about what needs to be done and a lack of understanding about what it takes.” That can be because there isn’t clear internal ownership, coordination, or education on the social media strategy. “In most companies, social media is everybody’s problem, and when it’s everybody’s problem, it’s nobody’s problem.”

Part of the challenge is the need for multiple function areas to respond to developments on social media in real time and in a fully coordinated way. “If you think about large global businesses, they are really fragmented; they are really siloed. They are siloed for a reason, because that’s how you scale,” Thomas noted. “Today, you really have to work across the silos.”

Even those firms that have clear ownership of the social media strategy and coordination across functions must continue to adapt their internal infrastructure as platforms develop and as customers change their minds about the brands and products they like. “The key is to come up with a new way to market,” Thomas said.

Where do the new ideas come from—the ones that change industries and societies? In a lecture at Yale SOM, Prof. Richard Foster explains what creativity is—and isn’t—and describes the kinds of traits, knowledge, and ways of thinking that lead to the moment of creative insight.